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Sinathir

Raising sim / survival game inspired by Princess Maker. · By QuentinWH

Sneak-peeks Sticky

A topic by QuentinWH created Sep 25, 2022 Views: 2,064 Replies: 124
Viewing posts 21 to 40 of 67 · Next page · Previous page · First page · Last page
(+1)

Looks great! I'd love to be able to mix and match traits for my future characters and optimize my playstyle around certain skills, like being a cook who forages or a ruthless hunter. I think that personality traits (like tomboy and psychopath) should be separated from stat boost traits (like the smart trait or skilled with guns) traits in that they can only be chosen once so that personality-specific dialogues don't conflict. It'd also be really cool for people to see that specific personalities can be chosen with their own unique dialogue for replayability value because when I first played I didn't know that the tomboy had different dialogue than the other 

(+1)

>I didn't know that the tomboy had different dialogue than the other 

what the fuck, it does?

To be perfectly honest, I didn't either. It's quite posible I put it in the game long time ago and forgot about it. Lol.

(+1)

Yup, when talking to the bridge bandit the dialogue is more blunt than when you're playing a different character

That's pretty much what this system does. You can combine traits in any way you want. There are some traits you can't pick together, for example being more afraid of abominations and being less afraid of abominations can't be picked together. You can take only one, which means there is less room for conflict. You can still take more than one personality trait however. You can be a psychopath who is good at haggling, enjoys company of other people and is a lazy worker. The system makes it very easy to check what traits the player has, so making unique dialogue for certain situations will be easy.

By the way, what dialogue is different for tomboy? I completely forgot about it.

(+1)

Sorry for the late reply, I've really only noticed the dialogue being different for the bandit guard at the bridge. The protagonist is simply more blunt and rude

I think there might be more dialogue like this. The cure quest deffinitely has multiple outcomes when you talk to the kobolds that want the cure from you and I'm sure there is even more I simply forgot about.

With all those traits I added, making more varied dialogue will be very easy. I just have to get to it.

(+1)

A little preview of the future character sprites.

This is not my highest priority right now, but I still tinker with the main character model from time to time, trying to improve the way it looks. These are the results of my experiments.

Again, this is me just playing around with blender. None of these are meant to be final. However, my goal is to make the shading softer than what the game has now. I just have to strike the propper ballance between the model looking like a drawing and looking like a plastic doll. 

Another thing I will most likely put in the game is variable skin color.

Making the skin of the protagonist get darker as she gets older seems like a nice touch. You spend quite a lot of time working outside so it's only natural for your skin to get tanned. I would like to tie this to some variable, so I can change the skin color depending on things you do and not just your age. This will most likely not happen though, since this would highly increase the amount of sprites I would have to do. I will think about it.

Other than that, I have one minor patch almost ready for release. It fixes two mutation related traits which were not working properly and two completely new traits. I might release it this weekend.

(+1)

I played through the game few days ago and found out two bigger problems

Not enough half-day activities and not enough ways to increase wellness.

I quickly put together a simple workout system. You select atribute you want to raise, then you select equipment. Time passes, you get wellness and your atribute increases a bit.

You will need food and some equipment will require you to have certain level in your atributes before you can even use it.

I will do some more testing and relese new version. I also improved the inventory and description system a bit. Now you won't get kicked to the map screen when you use an item, so you can heal your self or eat food quickly without having to open the inventory after every use.

(+1)

Man I just discovered this and I got to say, even for the state it's in now I love the idea behind it all, can't wait to see where this game is down the road!

Thanks. There is still a lot of work for me to do. Be sure to tell what you think about the game once you spend some time playing it.

(+1)

Next version will have basic world map. 

Bear in mind that I made this in MS pain in like five minutes and put a filter on it. This is in no way final.

People were getting lost way too often, so this should help them a little. You can access the map from the radial menu. It doesn't show all locations and move routes, so there is still plenty of exploration to do, not to mention shortucts.

i think it's a good idea to keep the aesthetics

think about it this way: how do you obtain this map? who drew it? if it was drawn by a child, it would make sense to be "crayon-like" in appearance

(+1)

I will most likely keep the map "hand drawn". My idea was to make the style of the map change together with the age of the main character. The map itself will be professionaly made, but there would be hand made notes and scribbles, which would change as you get older. I think this is doable.

(+1)

that's... really clever! can't wait to see it

The map system looks great! Personally, I've struggled with memorizing the paths when I first started the game but now,  it'l be a breeze knowing where to go! 

(+1)

I also want to fit NPC locations in there to make it even more useful.

And I will reintroduce getting bottles or bowls back after eating food, which is something I completely forgot about after the inventory overhaul.

(+1)

Another thing I promised long time ago. Bestiary.

Still not finished. I would like to fit item drops and other information in the. You will be able to scroll the information screen too, so there is really no limit to the amount of information I can fit there. I will also obscure most of the information at the start and reveal more and more depending on the amount of kills.

On top of that, I will add a system that changes the damage you do / receive to enemies depending on the amount you killed.

War system will take me longer than I thought, so the next major update will have the bestiary together with some new locations and enemies.

Bestiary is now pretty much finished.

As I said, it reveals more information depending on the number of kills. You can switch between the drops and description windows and you can scroll windows down and up. 

Drops work as you might expect. If enemy drops an item, it will appear in the bestiary together with its drop rate. Items you didn't get from that enemy yet will display as "???" so you know exacly how many items are missing. 

Two more things for me to do. Actualy add all enemies currently in the game and make the amount of kills influence the combat in some way.

Will there ever be any romance option or is it just a normal survival rpg?  I kinda got a similar feel of the game like that stardew valley game or harvest moon where even if its just a normal rpg you still get to marry someone

(1 edit)

I have four romance options prepared, but not in the game yet. I will most likely add slightly more, atleast one or two for every future settlement I'm going  to add.

Can we get a character customization that actually customize the character not just the trait stats? If there's gonna be a romance option, i think it would be cool if we get both male and female option for the romance according to main character's gender. Maybe even monster romance too?

Full character customisation is on my wish list, but I highly doubt I will add it before the rest of the game is finished, or if ever. The games story would still work if you could be both male and female, but it would pretty much double the amount sprites I'd have to do, not to mention doing all the alternate dialogue and cutscenes.

As I said, I'd like to do that, but I don't think it's relly going to happen.

(1 edit)

Another requested feature. 


By pressing SHIFT, you can see the statistics of the enemy you have currently selected. You will still need to kill them a few times for the information to appear.

Ooh, this looks really cool. Maybe you could implement it as a sort of item like the Pokedex from Pokemon and have a quest where you retrieve it before being able to see these stats.  Maybe the thing could be broken and it'll only get more information as you encounter new things and input it in the Pokedex.

STL file Pokemon Pokedex・Design to download and 3D print・Cults

That's pretty close to what I want to do.

You will get a PDA like device at the start of the game, which will pretty much explain all of the hud elements in the game. This is an old picture the wip main screen.

Also, the bestiary added in 0.29 already works like that. You get an empty list of enemies that gets filled as you encounter them and fight them.


Oh dang, that main screen looks straight up from fallout game, I love it! If you do ended up using that as the main menu and want to give the game a bit of fallout game feels please make the arm terminal a model you can see when checking your character out

I'm still not decided on what it's actualy going to be . It might be strapped to your arm like fallout pipboy, or it might be a slightly bigger phone you keep in you pocket. I might also scrap it and give the main character bionic eye that shows you the UI like in deus ex. I'm still experimenting with all of that since all options sound nice to some degree.

If you make it bionic eye, wouldn't it like hurt so much? Or have already you made a story where the main character eye got wounded and replaced with the bionic eye? Maybe make it a contact lense instead of an actual eye cyborg would be better

It was just an idea. While the major plot points are set and I won't be changing them, minor details might be changed. 

I have an intro section pre-planned. You start in Russia. You wake up, eat your breakfast and go play with your friends. Police then shows up and arrests you and your parents. You spend few days in a cell and then get put onto a ship with your parents. Before the ship arives at Sinathir, the prisoners rebel and try to escape. They all die, your parents included, but you stay alive. You get a letter some other prisoner was supposed to get and your task is to give it to Mr. White. If you do so, you will be set free.

What I wrote is set in stone and I won't be changing that. However, I will be adding and changing minor details.

Maybe you got a high-tech contact lense as a birthday gift the morning you got arrested, 

Maybe you got cought in the crossfire on that ship and your eye got damaged and since you are a child, they took pitty on you and gave you cheap bionic eye.

Maybe when the prisoners were fighting, you managed to steal the PDA from some dead soldier. Or maybe you got it together with the letter.

(+2)

More experimentation with graphics.

Again, nothing is final. I quite like the door, but they don't quite fit with the walls.

OMG new dungeon??? This thing looks so cool, like an abandoned missile silo with high level enemies! Great work!

looks very very cool. i think the doors look fine, the first thing i noticed was the dirt tile having a clearly blocky shape to it.

I tried using autotiles for the dirt, but it always ends up looking very blocky. But it's good roads and the shadows where the floor meets the wall. Still learning all that stuff.

New factory dungeon? Nice!

And even more experiments. With lighting this time.

The best way to make something look "good" is to simply make everything dark so it is harder to see anything bad. But I want to use the tilesets in brightly lit areas too so I can't really skimp on anything.

The story dungeon I'm working on will have a part where you restore the electricity in it, so I'm trying to strike a good ballance between "too dark" and "not dark enough".

The whole scene looks different once you add lights. The shadows in the door sprites, around the pipes or around the wall corners make the whole thing look much better in my opinion.

(+1)

I'm working on the new and improved character model. This includes improving it both visualy and "technicaly" I guess is the right word. Working with the old model was sometimes painful. Exported images had to be edited by hand or sometimes created from scratch. This made things like eyes or mouth animations nightmare to create. I managed to improve the model and my workflow well enough so that any editing I have to do will be minimal. Thanks to this, I will be able to add some decent enough facial animations. This will make your main character seem more alive as her expression changes in dialogue. I can also make better expressions for low health, being drunk and other states. Here are some work in progress faces I was playing with.

Again, work in progress and all that.

(+2)

Added another menu screen. The game now has three. One with no saves, one before finishing the game and one after finishing the game. The new menu screen shows when you have a save file but didn't finish the game yet. I even added simple animation that shows shortly after the main menu gets loaded.

It looks slighly different in the game since I had to chage the framerate and what not for the gif to fit here.

I will also add an option to switch between these three screens once you finish the game once.

that is wicked cool

perhaps consider an idle animation after that one? something like arms bobbing slightly, just so that it doesn't go from 'animation in the first second' -> no movement ever again

(+1)

I tried that and it didn't look good because the movement was too exagerated (And I pretty much don't know what I'm doing since I'm not good at animating). What I did is moving one of the frames 1 pixel down compared to the rest, which looks pretty decent and makes a illusion of breathing.

is it a 3d model that you convert to a 2D animation, or something else?

(+1)

Model with 5 frames of animation. Each frame is rendered into separate image. Last frame is duplicated five times so I have 10 images total. I aplied a filter to each image and saved it (Shaders are non existant in RMXP). In the game, first five frames show at the start and after that the last 5 frames keep repeating.

Holy smokes this looks amazing! What software did you use for this?

Model and animation was done in blender: https://www.blender.org/

Background is AI generated using this: https://nmkd.itch.io/t2i-gui

All of the editing, including the title text, menu options and the pencil filters were done in PhotoFiltre Studio X: https://www.photofiltre-studio.com/news-en.htm

This is a very weak program compared to photoshop or even gimp so if you use any of those daily, there is no need to use this I think. But I have been using it for almost two decades and it is really great for simple editing like this because of how easy it is to work with. I use gimp for more complex things.

As for the gif itself:

I recorded the game with OBS Studio (I didn't update it for years so I don't really know if it still works the same): https://obsproject.com/

I then uploaded it to: https://ezgif.com/video-to-gif

There I cut it  to size, clip the length and converted it to gif.

(+1)

I spent some time improving the work window. I will be redoing all UI elements rather soon, but the work window was really ugly. This should make it more bearable.


Some screenshot from the story dungeon.

The story dungeon will be the direct continuation of the last cutscene with the generals. After some time, you will get contacted by them and they will help you find Mr. White (The old way of reaching him will be removed from the game). They will refuse to take you there if your weapon skills and physical stats are too low. In later versions, there will be more ways to reach Mr. White, many of which will not require combat.

The dungeon it self will be pretty linear with plenty of dialogue explaining some lore bits and giving more personality to the generals and one other NPC that will acompany you. Dungeon will end with a boss fight and you will meet Mr. White after that. You will give him the letter and get more lore and dialogue. 

After that, he will act just like he did before. Selling equipment and training you. The dungeon in the basement will also be locked and you will need a special key to open it. He will give it to you. The event for getting certain number of humanoid kills will also be different.

Work is progressing smoothly. I still have some tiles to make and I will have to make a lot of dialoge and eventing, but I'm slowly getting there.

Will it be possible to complete Sinathir as a total pacifist? If there are ways to reach Mr. White without being good at combat, could we successfully beat the game without having to fight him?

(+1)

Definitely. There will be three major branches. 

  1. Go with the generals
  2. Join one of three factions on Sinathit, get popular and ask the faction leader where Mr. White is
  3. Ignore Mr. White completely and just live without ever meeting him

Second option will be achieveable without killing anything. You will learn a trade, join a faction, improve your trade skill and get popular with the faction residents and then talk to the faction leader, who knows where Mr. White is.

And that's only the first part of the main quest. Next part will be about deciding if you want to get rid of Mr. White, help him or just not get involved. 

This is very rough simplification, since I don't want to spoil everything, but there will be multiple ways to finish the main story line and finishing the game without fighting anything at all will be possible.

(+1)

The dungeon is now, graphicaly speaking, complete. 

I don't want to spoil everything so here is a screenshot of Mr. White's hideout. 

Apart from the layout, I also finished the boss fight at the end of it. The boss will be using skills and will require some tactical thinking to take down, but it won't be that difficult to take out. 

Only thing left to do is to make all the dialogue and some other minor things. If everything goes smoothly, the dungeon should be released next monday.

Also, this version will NOT be compatible with old saves (Unlock will stay, as always) so be sure to finish your playthrough before that.

looking good! did you decide if you're submitting to dd50?

(+1)

If I manage to finish the dungeon, then yes. I don't think anybody playing on the demo day will get that far though. I don't think I will be adding any kind of shortcut to enter the dungeon early, because it will serve mainly as a story setpiece and most of the things happening in there will not make much sence without playing through the rest of the game beforehand.

(+1)

Another screenshot.

I don't think this should be considered a spoiler. You will obviously be fighting abominations in this dungeon.

There will be quite a bit of dialogue in this dungeon. You will be walking through it together with the generals and they will have different dialogue depending on your character, or decisions.

One example is the picture above. This is the first enemy you encounter in the dungeon. Ordinary hungry abomination. After fighting it, you will get different dialogue depending on multiple things:

There are more situations like this. Some are affected by traits and there is one that is affected by how fast you do certain thing. 

Large portion of the work needed is done. I still have to finish the encounter with Mr. White and change some existing events that are already in the game (Event for humanoid kills will be different, he won't be in the forest basement). If everything moves smoothly, new version might be released even sooner.

Small thing I'm currently working on. Morality system.

This isn't really anything new, since basis of this system are already in the game. This will simply visualise your morality and flesh them out a little.

The way it works is really simple. Doing bad things, like taking drugs or killing animals and humanoids will lower your morality. Doing good things, like talking to people, working, doing quests or taking care of animals will increase it. 

It will range from -100 to +100. Every ten points you will gain a perk/trait. For example, first positive trait will give you 5% discount in shops. Next trait will increase the money you get from jobs and next one will incrase your mood gain and money you get from completing quests and so on.

Negative traits will do pretty much what they do now. First perk will remove mood loss from killing animals, second will lower loss for killing humanoids, third will allow you to butcher humanoids and so on.

While the initial system will be quite simple, it will give me more options in the future and it will give you more roleplaying options. You will be able to go from good to evil and vice versa, so you can play as a good character but then something bad happends and you can start acting badly, which will in time remove your positive perks and give you new negative ones.

It will also allow me to make better dialogue and quests.

For example, someone asks you to rescue a cat from a tree. Neutral character will get an option to say yes or no. Slightly good character will say yes automaticaly. Very good character will say yes and refuse any reward. Slightly bad character will say no automaticaly, but the NPC will offer you some money upfront. Very evil character will say no, no matter the reward.

This is all just a concept. I will see how things turn out.

So how would the current traits like psychopath, afraid, brave and stuff work with the new rep system? Currently they say you can't get used to killing but double/nullify mood loss to certain mob types, also is the icon for evil Nika supposed to be a generic devil or are the black eyes indicating THAT thing?

Starting traits will be above any other traits affecting the same thing. If you take psychopath, you will lose no mood when killing humanoids right from the start and evil traits will therefore do nothing. However, later evil traits will start actualy giving you mood for killing humanoids, but you will get nothing because you have the psychopath trait. I think this will balance things nicely since you will benefit from these traits at the start, but they might prove to be less useful later on as you get more morality perks. I will also add a proper way to change your traits mid game so you are not stuck with traits you don't like forever.

As for bonuses like more money from working or sale discount, these will simpy stack with other traits.

The evil icon is a mix of both generic devil and things in the game.

(1 edit) (+1)

First, I want to apologize for slower updates. I lost someone very dear to me which made it hard for me to do pretty much anything. I will get over it though and resume working at my usual pace in near future.

Most of the work on the morality system is done. Perks are ready, bars fill and decrease as they should and different actions increase / decrease your morality correctly. Only thing left is to actualy make the perks do something. No ETA yet, but I would like to finish this before the end of month.

(+1)

sorry for your loss

take your time, there is no need to force yourself to work. excited to see this in action once it's ready

(+1)

Take as much time as you need, we all understand.

(+1)

The number of successful work days is now pre-determined. What the "Total" values says is the exact number of successes you will get. Not more and not less. The exact days you mess up or work properly are still randomised to make the animations more interesting than first days being successful and the rest failing.

Training also works like this now. 

I will do some more testing and then release this new version. This is a small, but quite serious change that will hopefuly make the game better.

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